ICA targets top arts guru

The Institute of Contemporary Arts is plotting to appoint one of the world's most highly regarded young arts gurus as its new director.

Hans Ulrich Obrist - who first curated an exhibition in his kitchen aged 23 - is in line to replace ICA director Philip Dodd, 55, who has resigned to take another job.

The ICA has been under pressure, with critics accusing it of losing its cutting edge. Joan Bakewell, chairwoman of the National Campaign for the Arts, said: "It was a place we all used to go to once, but it's not essential any more."

The Arts Council, which gives the ICA more than £1 million a year in public funding, warned: "It needs a clear vision for the future."

Now the ICA has identified Obrist, 36, as the leading target for the top job. A source revealed Obrist was one of five final candidates interviewed by the ICA's council at a clandestine meeting at Tate Britain this week, and won over his interrogators.

Obrist has now been offered a contract for the directorship, which brings a salary of nearly £100,000, according to the source. However, details have yet to be rubber-stamped.

The source said: "If they get him it will be the art world equivalent of when Arsenal signed Thierry Henry - a brilliant coup."

Obrist has been based in Paris since 1990. A decade ago he curated his first UK exhibition, Take Me (I'm Yours) at the Serpentine Gallery. The show drew a record 128,000 visitors who were encouraged to peruse exhibits including clothes, fruit and photocopied images, then take them home.

He said at the time: "The only thing that matters is to change what people expect from an exhibition, to create a rupture. I am not interested in merely filling spaces."

As well as his kitchen, those spaces have included a monastery, the fold-down trays of planes, and Zurich's Drainage Museum. He said: "I grew up on the corner of three countries, so I went to school in Switzerland, lunch in Austria and the cinema in Germany. National boundaries mean nothing to me."

Art dealer Victoria Miro said: "It would be wonderful to have him at the ICA. He is a melting pot, the most international, dynamic, and rounded curator I have ever come across."